Migrant crisis deepens fissures between EU members

The EU member states do not appear to have the collective political will to tackle the migrant crisis seriously.

Attempts to frame a policy response to deal with a small proportion of migrants have led to acrimonious divisions.

With the flow of migrants certain to intensify and to persist, a strategy of muddling through is unlikely to work for long.

The crisis has undermined the supposedly fundamental principle of free movement of labour.

It has also highlighted corrosive differences of political culture between some western and eastern member states.

The EU appears to be moving slowly but inevitably towards a less uniform set of relations between many of its member states.

On September 22nd and 23rd EU policymakers made their most ambitious attempt yet to put in place a framework for dealing with the migrant crisis, which has intensified sharply in recent months. Although the progress made was piecemeal and insufficient, it has prompted an acrimonious split between member states, some of which are deeply divided on this issue.

Measures agreed do not come close to solving the problem

The main measures, announced by interior ministers following their summit on September 22nd and by heads of government the following day, were as follows:

a system of quotas to distribute 120,000 refugees from frontline states across the EU; in theory this applies to almost all 28 members (a few have opt-outs), but in practice is unlikely to apply to those who voted against the measure;

the introduction by end-November of so-called "hotspots", which will involve additional EU resources going to frontline states to speed the processing of migrants; and

an extra €1bn in aid for countries in the Middle East and Africa, aimed at reducing the flow of migrants from those regions.

Given that officials are publicly estimating that up to 5m migrants will arrive at the EU's borders over the next three years, this is, at best, a tentative first step towards a lasting policy response. At worst, it is a further example of Europe's leaders' inability to move beyond ineffective strategies of "muddling through" when faced with crises.

The proposed quota system triggered significant discord among member states. Four countries—Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania—voted against key provisions, and Finland abstained. However, their objections did not prevent the EU-wide adoption of the new framework, as the vote was conducted according to the EU's system of qualified majority voting, under which a minority of states can be overruled if there is sufficient consensus among their peers.

It is very unusual for issues as sensitive as those entailed by the migrant crisis to be decided upon according to qualified majority voting rather than unanimity. Underpinning the deep resistance to the proposals was the fact that EU policy is—unjustifiably in the view of central and eastern European countries—overriding national sovereignty in politically fundamental areas including territorial integrity, national identity and social cohesion. The counter-argument of states in favour of the new proposals is that a willingness to make uncomfortable compromises on once-inviolable attributes of statehood is a price that all EU members have signed up for.

The EU cannot rely on its usual crisis-management strategies

The damage caused by this eruption of tension over the nature of sovereignty within the EU is potentially far-reaching. Decision-making within the bloc has already become increasingly difficult. The number of member states has expanded rapidly since the turn of the century and—importantly in the current context—many of the new central and eastern European members have significantly different histories and political cultures to their western peers, as well as more limited recent experience of managing significant flows of inward migration.

Getting things done in the EU relies on an occasionally costly willingness among member states to compromise in areas where others feel core interests are at stake. The difficulty of achieving this has resulted in a tendency towards procrastination and muddling through with clearly sub-optimal policies. Even in the euro zone, a more manageable subset of EU states, leaders have repeatedly "kicked the can down the road" rather than grapple with the increasingly stark political and institutional tensions that have emerged in the bloc.

With the migrant crisis, however, neither compromise nor delay is a feasible response. As far as compromise is concerned, there is little scope for splitting the difference between (i) the view that the EU response to the migrant crisis must trump national reservations if it is to be effective, and (ii) the counter-argument that certain national prerogatives are too fundamental to be trumped in this way.

Falling back on a strategy of procrastination is impossible given the scale and dynamics of the migrant challenge. In July 2015, 107,500 migrants arrived at the EU's borders, three times the year-earlier figure and the first time on record in which monthly numbers exceeded 100,000. It has been possible to some extent for Europe's politicians to massage the domestic impact of the region's fiscal and financial crises through their budgetary decisions. The same is not true of a migrant crisis. The accelerating flow of refugees and other immigrants in recent months is not a can that can be kicked down the road. It requires an immediate policy response if its effect on key principles of European integration—notably free movement—are not to become entrenched.

Another fundamental pillar is starting to crumble

The threat posed to the principle of free movement is one reason for the EU's speedy and acrimonious adoption of a region-wide response, despite the objections of states in central and eastern Europe. When the migrant crisis surged in early September, it took only days for the EU's supposedly sacrosanct principle of free movement of people within the bloc to descend into confusion and inconsistency as a succession of Schengen member states re-introduced border controls in order to impose national control over the volume of migrants arriving.

The EU response announced on September 22nd and 23rd puts in place the outline of a process to prevent this recurring: regaining control of the EU's external borders, while sharing among member states the burden of those refugees who are admitted to the bloc. It is far from clear that this process will be successful. For one thing it remains embryonic and insufficient to deal even with current numbers of migrants, let alone the much greater numbers that are expected to arrive in the coming years.

If putting in place this partial response has caused a rift among member states—the tensions are more complicated than the outward appearance of an east-west divide suggests—scaling it up may not be feasible without causing much more serious damage to political cohesion in the EU. However, if the response is not scaled up, the erosion of free movement of people within the bloc is certain to continue, with a de facto return to a policy of border controls between member states.

With the principle of free movement of capital having already been badly undermined by the euro zone crisis, a pattern is emerging of fundamental political tenets of European integration being incapable of withstanding significant strain. This does not augur well for the future of the EU.

The fabric of European integration is fraying

It is difficult to envisage the EU framing a response to the migrant crisis that is both sufficient and sustainable. The situation is more likely to last decades than years and the scale of the inflows is set to increase. This reflects both the push factor of prolonged instability in the Middle East and the pull factor of refugees—including the millions currently living in camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan—seeing the EU reluctantly acknowledge that it will need to absorb greatly increased numbers.

National political dynamics in many EU states militate against many of the bloc's leaders making internationally generous moves in the interests of European cohesion. The growing electoral traction being enjoyed by many anti-establishment parties opposed to immigration—a trend evident in major western states as well as their eastern peers—is one of the most important drivers of the EU's response to recent events.

Moreover, the migrant situation is only the latest in a growing list of forces pushing the EU in the direction of a looser and less uniform set of relations between its member states. The euro zone crisis is the most obvious other such force. There are strong similarities between the two crises: in both cases technocratic arguments for much greater collective pooling of sovereignty have bumped up against strong public resistance in some member states.

Given that democratic legitimacy remains firmly rooted at the national rather than the European level, political logic suggests that Europe's crises will not be resolved by a collective decision to integrate much more rapidly. More likely is a drift towards a looser and less uniform arrangement in which national opt-outs play an increased role and various like-minded states push ahead with increased integration in areas where pre-existing political convergence avoids the need for contentious compromise. The EU is drifting away from the idea, set down in its treaties, of "an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe".